The JAX-RS EG recently announced that a set of client APIs will be standardized in JAX-RS 2.0 (see example). With that announcement, and the continued industry adoption of REST services, I think the time is right to convert the Arquillian declarative REST testing prototype that Aslak created into an official module. The extension is currently based on RESTEasy, but should be changed immediately to use the proposed JAX-RS client APIs.

Decide what type of container to use before writing tests < We always say the *opposite*

Do not use WebAppDescriptor for low-level containers < Exactly, use ShrinkWrap Descriptors, a portable API

The post also talks about having to use mocks and other workarounds to make the test work without a proper environment. All of that is solved by Arquillian, so providing a REST extension is an excellent fit.

Btw, this feature is inspired in part by restfuse. However, we believe that Arquillian offers a much simpler way to integrate this functionality into tests that doesn't rely on JUnit's @Rule (not to mention the Arquillian test would be portable to TestNG).